Ana’s Thesis Update

My thesis will be a short VR puzzle game, made in Unity and hopefully playable on the Oculus Quest.

Inspiration:

Ever since I was young I’ve always loved video games. I alway wanted to get into the game industry in some capacity, even if I didn’t have the language for it for the longest time. I didn’t exactly understand how video games were made, but I knew I wanted to be involved in the creative process of telling an interactive story told through gameplay. In high school I started coding and making simple games, and after that the idea of making video games as a career seemed a bit more feasible.

Myst has been one of my favorite games for most of my life, and I really enjoy the nature of the puzzles and atmospheric storytelling that is the case in games like that. The story of Myst is relative simple, but a big influence on the way that I write stories today. I am also a big fan of low poly graphics and models, during the N64 era of games in the 90s.

Implementation:

I’m thinking about making most if not all of the 3D models myself in Maya. I don’t really know much about 3D modeling, but I’ve been looking up a lot of video tutorials recently, and the process seems doable enough, as long as I keep my scope in mind. I also plan on keeping the models all pretty low-poly, which will likely make it easier to make a lot of them within a shorter amount of time.

The sound effects will be mostly ambient. I’ll record some myself if I have the time and ability, if not I’ll try to find some free to use forest and water sounds online.

I’m planning on compiling all of these parts into Unity, which I am at least semi-comfortable doing. I know how to code in several languages, and am in the process of learning C# now.

A bigger setback of mine is being very unfamiliar with a lot of the involved technology. I’m new to VR and have a lot to learn about. While I understand the basic principles, the software would all be new to me, and take some figuring out.

My goal by the end of the semester will be to have rough 3D space created, that allows the player to move around and interact with their environment to some degree. In addition to this, I also plan on creating a very very simple project that is able to be played on the Oculus Quest 2, just to get a feel for the software. Whether or not this simple project will be the actual 3D space of my project or just a simple empty plane for the player to walk around in is tbd, depending on how difficult the software is for me to grasp in a short period of time.